Category: Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 179 – 6/13/2023

Jo Beall

“Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.”

~ Rumi ~

~

on this day of beginning the 100 day countdown to the International Day of Peace on 9/21, i share this image representing the image that i am immersed in, that of the prophecy of the condor and eagle foretelling we will return to a time of peace and harmony when these great birds of spirit fly together in balance rather than oppression and so here they are flying as one painting peace across the vast skysea…

every year since 1981, on the 21st of September, the United Nations calls on all nations and people to put down their weapons and reaffirm their commitment to living in harmony with one another… this year’s theme of “Actions For Peace” inspires embodying that we are not each other’s enemies, that we belong to each other and must work together as what happens in one part of the planet impacts all our relatives…

let us celebrate “Actions For Peace” by spreading compassion, kindness and hope in the face of the pandemics of militarism, materialism, racism, environmental disruption and health and standing together in unity for the benefit of all beginning in this moment with this breath… yes, let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me and thee… let us create a cosmos where PEACE is built with justice and guided by love…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 178 – 6/12/2023

Jo Beall2 Comments on Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 178 – 6/12/2023

“Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.”

~ Rumi ~

~

in this astonishing light of our interbeing moment of eternity on this day of poetic peace pilgrimage breathing in surrender and breathing out release:

may we travel lightly with

more and more love

and more and more surrender

more and more love

and more and more surrender

more and more love

and more and more surrender

into the vast spaciousness of love

into the eternal chorus of the celestial realms with angelic beings re-joy-sing to earth beings below,

into the silent whispers of the stone peoples,

into the coyotes howling to the waning moon,

into the twinkling eyes of children,

into your beloved’s hand holding yours promising never to forsake you,

into the smile of a stranger who is now a friend,

into the good, the true the beautiful, all that we can witness all over the planet in every moment through the eyes of love,

into the sweet nectar of love…

may we celebrate the cosmic dream of peace coming alive this moment in our collective metamorphosis uprising from sea of love energy to shining sea of love energy…

may this day be blessed with gifts, lessons, understanding and friends… may our energy be a gift to all we meet… let us be centered, healing and open facing the day with courage, kindness, insight and compassion… may we honor this day…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 177 – 6/11/2023

Jo Beall

in this moment of eternity vibrating at the auspicious energy of light as we draw down the energy of great mystery under the moon of trailblazing, of listening to the soul song, of leaping in faith as an imaginal cell, the fledgling in this image transports me today to an old story from africa…

~

when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, listening until she hears the soul song of the child that wants to come…

and when the mother is pregnant, she teaches that child’s soul song to the women of the village, so that when the child is born, they will welcome her with that song…

when the child goes through the rites of puberty, the we’moon come together to sing that soul song…

and when the child falls, or hurts its knee, they will pick him up and remind him of the soul song…

when the child crowns a noble achievement, they will celebrate with that soul song…

and if ever along the way the child gets swept up in the world and loses her way, the villagers will come together and remind her of her soul song…

finally, when the child passes away, they will honor his life by singing the soul song…

~

“…It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change’s gonna come, oh, yes, it will…”  ~ Sam Cook ~

as we pause on the precipice of a new journey into the unknown, may  we sing courageously celebrating rebirth, renewal and resurrection…

thank you, thank you, thank you for singing the soul song for all children of the earth…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 176 – 6/10/2023

Jo Beall

today is the 60th anniversary of one of the best speeches ever given, a speech i could listen to daily which is why i’m reprising it… JFK was assassinated during his term in office, some 5 months after delivering this inspiring call for a culture of peace while serving the causes of peace and nuclear disarmament… to celebrate his memory and legacy, i have been circling with other peacemakers including hours with mahatmaji and now i’ll post some stirring words of his (JFK’s) that are taken from a June of 1963 Commencement Address at American University, where JFK delivered A Strategy for Peace:

“…I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived–yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

…I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war–and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament-and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude–as individuals and as a Nation–for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward–by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable–that mankind is doomed–that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are man made – therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace–based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions–on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace–no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process–a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor–it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it…”

yes, let us persevere and move irresistibly toward peace…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 174 – 6/8/2023

Jo Beall

today is so very sacred… it’s world oceans day, a day i love, love, love with waters making up 70% of mama gaia’s body and ours while molecularly we are 99% water; it is all the more sacred for me as it coincides significantly, synchronizes with the eighth anniversary of the opening of the fire eye, a eight year initiation into the great turning, the shift of the ages, the coming home to the heart, the deepening into mystical/mythical consciousness of imagination in that field of the great beyond where everything is interbeing as one, related, connected living organism always expanding and always deepening… yes, let’s celebrate on this dark night when the invisible realms are birthing dancing stars and re-member WATER as an acronym for whom we truly are: We Are The Eternal Radiance…

Happy Cosmic Ocean of Being Day!

~

“Ocean is a mighty harmonist.” ~William Wordsworth ~

~

Canada made the original proposal for World Oceans Day in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The day has been unofficially celebrated every June 8 since then, and, in 2008, the United Nations officially recognized it.

today, i celebrate with a special return interior pilgrimage to the sea of love energy, sacred space of dancing rainbow mystery, such a journey always brings me back into soul space… is there anything more deepening than listening to our mother waters magnetizing us home?… than breathing in the rhythms of waves?… than flowing and ebbing with the tides?…

~

“To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim–the rocks–the motion of the waves…” ~ Walt Whitman ~

“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came”… ~ John F Kennedy ~

“The cure for anything is salt water…” ~ Isak Dinesen

~

As the First Peoples remind us and live… Mni Wiconi, Water is Life… Like the First Peoples and Sylvia Earle, I think of the ocean as the blue heart of the planet… It is the one true connection of all our relations – let us celebrate her everyday…

speaking of the First Peoples, i must take the opportunity of this sacred day to amplify the thousands of voices gathered on turtle island to stop the black snake by quoting one of the organizers of this treaty gathering, Tara Houska:

“We love our water protectors. They’re incredible. They’re amazing. They’re out here on the frontlines defending this beautiful, beautiful territory and using their bodies, using their agency, using their hearts, using their minds, using their power to stand up for something more. … We have treaty that were guaranteed for this place. They’re in violation of that. They’re in direct violation of their own laws. And we are not trespassing. We are — this is our land. This is our territory. Enbridge is trespassing, just like all the other companies in so many other places where sovereign nations have said no.”

the people, united, will never be divided! the people, united, will never be divided! we stand with Indigenous nations! may the oceans of being, the seas of love energy be the mighty harmonist in this and every moment of eternity…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 173 – 6/7/2023

Jo Beall

“WAKE AT DAWN WITH A WINGED HEART AND GIVE THANKS FOR ANOTHER DAY OF LOVING.”
– KAHLIL GIBRAN –

and, these words express how i awake today after a beautiful dream of journeying into the unknown and moving into an expansive space in a sacred setting of communitas…

i arise with the intention of going out into the 3D world only to be transported into the 5D world on the farther shore reminding me of one of my favorite Teilhard quotes about harnessing the power of love and discovering fire for the second time which brings up an image created 3 or 4 years ago just right for today… like today, on the day the image was created we were:

meeting on the far shore

seeing true nature everywhere

being lovingkindness

and this is the clear intention i return with after light years of galactic travel made all the more profound when i real-eyes the transformational journey that unfolded 8 years ago today that so upended life as i knew it as i took off  for parts unknown with everything humming along until my chariot died on a busy thoroughfare foreshadowing quite an initiation to come an amazing adventure still unfolding to this moment of sacred eternity deepening the clear intention of seeing love in everything, being a holy vessel, a holding container, a beholder, a hollow reed of love and peace and joy and gratitude and light…

so, in this moment, in every moment, let’s savor and offer thanks to sky and earth and sun and moon and stars and ocean and to beloved for breathing us alive…

in this moment of eternity, let’s listen to beloved’s hum as we gaze into her flowing mirror pulling us home to the heart ever more deeply…

in this moment of eternity, let’s answer beloved’s call to return to the stillpoint of equanimity where we live in harmony…

in this moment of eternity, let’s breathe in the rhythm of the waves infusing every wild cell of our one body with radiant love and more and more radiant love…

may we each feel and be filled with the light we are and fire up the whole cosmos with waves of luminescence with our every breath always choosing love, being our true nature no matter what…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 172 – 6/6/2023

Jo Beall

today is the anniversary of D-Day and the 10th anniversary of the Snowden Reprts and the 8th anniversary on the eve of a pilgrimage that would profoundlly uproot my life and so perfume these re-memberings with some healing balm:

“When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.“
~ Wendell Berry ~

may we all rest in the grace of wildpeace and feel free intending wholeheartedly the world of harmony that is our birthright…

namaste’

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 171 – 6/5/2023

Jo Beall

today is World Environment Day as is everyday and with our crisis of climate change, our attention is so riveted here… it’s Breonna Taylor’s 30th birthday, tragically she was murdered by police in her home in March three years ago while the world over we still mourn the murders of so many beautiful souls who bring us together to say enough to violence!… and, enough to systemic racism which dehumanizes us all and this reminds me of another murdered soul – Martin Luther King – which weaves right into today which is also the 55th anniversary of the shooting of Robert F Kennedy, a man who suffered deeply following the assassination of his brother, a man who faced darkness, who tamed the savage forces and transmuted them into a widening circle of compassion…

 let us return now to Bobby and Martin today and the wisdom we can derive from re-membering Bobby’s words and actions of wise leadership to help with grief in a moment of volcanic eruption…

“I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

yes, may we dedicate ourselves to peace and say a prayer, an intention for the usa, the planet, the cosmos and all our relatives real-eye-sing we are one interconnected being belonging to each other…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 170 – 6/4/2023

Jo Beall

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” 

~ Marcel Proust ~

~

rising, i descend into opening to the astonishing light of this sacred moment of eternity under the radiation of the full moon of blessings on this Saka Dawa day of honoring Buddha to dreamweave the world awake while flowing with the river along the liberation pathless path…

in this liminal space, this threshold, this moment of eternity with the world we knew unraveling and uncertainty all around, picking up our thread to re-weaving the world anew is the order of the day, the great work we are called to offer as we take this wild and precious moment surrender into the devocean of interbeing…

join me in these sacred waters reveling in the luminosity of the clear light
dreamweaving the world of wisdom and wonder awake…

 we are dreamweavers
whole and holy
wild and free.
gatekeepers of divinity
 
the sacred waters of the cosmic wombspace reveal
the dreams we carry, the dreams forgotten,
the dreams long remembered…

as holy vessels of heaven/earth, we surrender our entire
being for these dreams to be heard, felt, called forth,
woven into the sacred web of life for the greatest good of all beings…
 
this is a sacred commitment to live our devocean…
 
this is our starseed destiny…

into the watery womb, speak a dream aloud that you are actively tending for yourself and the collective…
take a deep breath feeling into the energies present and listening for nature’s response…

as spirit and matter merge,
and the mythic and mundane together re-weave, 
it is done, it is done, it is done…

we are dreamweavers 
dreaming the world awake
here and now
always and forever…

and so it is, and so it is, and so it is…
blessed bee, blessed bee, blessed bee…

may we all awaken to earth’s energy re-membering we are one heart…
may we all awaken to earth’s oceans as our clean-sing tears…
may we all awaken to earth’s wind as our enlivening breath…
may we all awaken to earth’s landscape as our one body…

may our one heart open dormant seeds
may our tears fill rain clouds
may our breath give flight to migrating birds
may our body be an island of refuge

 may earth mother open dormant seeds
may earth mother fill rain clouds
may earth mother give flight to migrating birds
may earth mother nurture islands of refuge

and, may the cycles of life flow unceasingly…

~

take all that I say,
and toss away
all that does not
resonate
for we do not learn
wisdom and wonder
we re-member what’s within…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 169 – 6/3/2023

Jo Beall

as i write on this 3rd day of joining june, the moonth of listening to the muse, the moon of blessings is now full inspiring our celebrating and standing more rooted in the deep earth of being while stretched simultaneously to the heavens feeling the call more emphatically than ever to come home and do the heart work of returning to the garden in the field of unconditional love out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing contemplating once again the old story of there’s a spirit in everything, a genius, a divine spark that we are all called to re-member so Rilke’s words quoted in the image arise organically as do Michelangelo’s:

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

and even more emphatically when he says:

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

aren’t these words all an excellent instruction manual on doing the heart work of aligning with great spirit, rainbow mystery, the one heart, creative process, authenticity?…

yes, join me in listening, listening, listening ever more deeply to our heartsong… release the spirit of the wise pilgrim, the spirit muse to navigate the journey, the genie always within every bottle/body… and then, may we all proclaim, free at last, free at last, free to:

walk in beauty on the path today

breathe it in and be carried away

by whispering winds demanding their say:

behold the wonder of each moment this day…

~